


Polluted

by veterization



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 05:33:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veterization/pseuds/veterization
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harris starts abusing Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Polluted

**Author's Note:**

> This was a dreadfully depressing prompt from the lovely Hannah, who wanted Harris sexually abusing Stiles with some Derek/Stiles hurt/comfort. I don't normally write things this dark and I'd just like to clarify that I've never been abused, sexually or otherwise, and I understand to any of you that have that it is a painful process that is very difficult to put into words, and by writing this story I do not mean to offend anybody. 
> 
> That being said, I hope I did justice to some emotions that abuse victims go through, and continue hoping that my next story will be cheerier in topic!
> 
> How is everyone enjoying hiatus?

It starts out as something trivial, like Harris extending his detention. It's not a big deal, just a nuisance, considering that it's cutting into his time reserved for saving the world from werewolves and their rivals or his equally important video gaming time if nothing else, and instead he has to spend his after school time sitting stationary in the chemistry classroom watching the minute hand tick by like it'll answer all of life's important questions if he stares long enough.

Later, it changes. Harris starts blaming Stiles for all of the things his father ever did to him, like pulling him over for a speeding ticket when he was late to school or putting him in jail for the murders that were the responsibility of Jackson as the kanima and effectively taking a good chunk of his reputation among his coworkers and students with him. Stiles barrels through it, zoning out whenever Harris explains to him exactly how Stiles will be his outlet for revenge in words so carefully chosen it almost doesn't sound like an offense at all but rather a teacher's right to berate a student so heavily for his father's mistakes, daydreaming about Lydia or worrying about Scott.

It doesn't take long for it to escalate from there. It goes from elongated detentions to interminable lectures and then, seamlessly, it gets physical, and next thing Stiles knows, he's neck-deep in something there doesn't seem to be an escape route from.

\--

Derek doesn't notice that something is wrong for a while, not until Stiles actually starts hanging around him an amount of time that starts out as an obnoxious chunk and slowly morphs into almost pleasurable company. He has his own problems, like the vindictive uncle he thought he had taken care of suddenly popping up in his life or Isaac to be mentored in how to protect himself against the Alpha pack, and doesn't need to start adding the stress of an adolescent teenager's problems to his life by befriending Stiles, even if the kid is useful at times. 

Still, it happens somehow without his permission. Stiles insists on helping with preparing for the Alphas and researching alongside Derek with perseverance Derek never would have expected to burn so brightly in a hyperactive high school kid. Stiles blows off his chemistry homework for a good week in order to join Derek in insomnia and do as much digging through the Hale family records that are still readable through the soot and fire damage, and Derek doesn't tell him to go away. Amazingly enough, it works, probably because Stiles isn't nearly as hard-headed and disobedient to directions as Scott and Derek can't afford losing the help that Stiles brings by pouring over files that would have spent Derek double the time to do alone.

He learns a few things about the kid, like the fact that he's still bummed about Lydia and Jackson cementing back into a relationship that now seems rather unshakable ever since their near death encounters but is working on readjusting his scope, or that he's thought about going into the police force himself just like his father. Derek imagines him in the suit, fumbling to unclasp his flashlight or teasing the people who run red lights, and thinks it would be a good career fit.

They're eating lunch on the porch of the Hale house one summer day right before school starts again, Stiles downing Popsicles like they're his only lifeline to not dying of heat stroke under the August sun, telling Derek about how this time last year Scott was still just a normal teenager and how, in detail, his plan to win over Lydia has changed ever since Jackson's interference, when Derek says, "Don't you think you should give her up and maybe try chasing something else you can't catch?"

Stiles starts at him, lips tinged blue from his ice cream dribbling down his wrist, like he's processing the idea of actually trying to get over Lydia Martin, and a second later he's pushing his sticky, ice cold lips on Derek's unsuspecting mouth and planting a slippery kiss on him.

They stare at each other for a good sixty seconds after that before either of them knows what to do or how to address the sudden tension in the air, tension Derek hasn't felt since high school or Kate, and when Stiles kisses him again, dropping his ice cream in the grass with a sureness that wasn't there before, Derek doesn't push him away.

\--

When his junior year starts, Stiles suspects that Mr. Harris is sated with his indirect punishment to the Sheriff through Stiles and believes justice has been restored once again, but he's wrong.

He gets detention for playing with a paper airplane in the hallway during passing period and goes to Harris' office after school. He cleans the board and wipes down the gum from the underside of desks, and then Harris sticks his hand down his pants.

He realizes then that he's too far in, too dirty, too blemished to get out. That night, Stiles doesn't eat dinner and he locks himself into the bathroom, sitting in the tub while the water pours down as if waiting for the shower head to be able to rid his skin from the grime that's bubbling under his flesh, just out of touch, until the water burns his eyes and pours into his mouth until it nearly drowns him. He lets the water gag his throat under the hope that it'll make him feel better, make him clean from the inside out, but when he turns off the steady splatter of the water and opens his eyes, staring at the white ceiling looming over him, like a halo just of reach, all he feels is a telltale gurgle in his stomach.

He slips and stumbles crawling out of the bathtub, splashing puddles of water in the wake of his clumsy footprints before he reaches the toilet. He looks in the mirror, suddenly grateful that he can see nothing but a foggy outline of a boy through the condensation, and drops to the floor with a heavy thunk and vomits into the toilet. His stomach lurches, over and over, regurgitating the dinner he didn't eat and the lunch from hours before into chunks that swim in the toilet bowl like reminders of his humiliation. His body feels slimy, chest heaving and mouth reeking of sick, and suddenly he can still feel the ghostly residue of Harris' touch, his hands on his thighs, his voice, breathy and warm in his ear. He heaves again, just splatters of stomach acid, until his throat is raspy and his entire body feels spent and ready to pitch into the toilet bowl.

Stiles thinks of Scott, so physically strong he can take on any challenge from lacrosse combats to werewolf battles, and Derek, who never lets a single emotion break the surface of his distant exterior, and feels a weakness tremble through his body that he can do nothing to get rid of.

\--

Derek doesn't know exactly how dead in the heart he is, but he gets a good glimpse of exactly how much work he has to do with himself mentally before he'll be able to empathize properly with a human again when he realizes that it takes him pushing Stiles against a wall and ravishing his neck with his tongue to realize that something is bothering the boy that he's spent the last few months in close-knit quarters with.

He's got his hands encircling Stiles' wrist, firm and demanding like he doesn't know any other way, tongue licking at the salty canal of Stiles' neck when he feels something under his hands. A tremor.

It's not one of pleasure, a shudder of poorly veiled arousal, or even one of anticipation for what's to come. This is how Derek's hands work, delivering ministrations that are equal parts pleasure and pain, blending together into something hot and needy and flaming that could be construed as both a punishment and a reward, and Stiles normally takes it. For a human, a scrawny human at that, Stiles embraces the aggression and usually throws himself into it like he's begging to be ravished and manhandled, like the pain is just a fleeting spark that spurs on his arousal, but it's different today. He's hurt, actually hurt, a soft whimper escaping his lips without permission that's barely audible, and Derek pulls his nose out of the crook of Stiles' neck to survey his face.

His face isn't where the evidence is, though, and Derek's eyes flicker down to his wrists. Right underneath where his fingers are grasping Stiles' wrists, a purpled ring of a bruise sits, permeating the skin like dark, blotchy paint seeping into his veins. Derek pulls back, completely unsure, because it's been a while since he's hurt Stiles with purpose. He used to smash his head into steering wheels, flatten him against doors, threaten him with his fangs, but that was before. Abuse was part of their relationship, almost comical, and Stiles never looked threatened, something which used to frustrate Derek to no end when his intimidatory methods fell flat with a high school student. But it changed along the way when they became alliances and continuously came to each other's aid, Stiles always there to save Derek's neck when he was vulnerable and near death, a meek human with much more to provide than Derek had originally expected out of him.

Now they're something that Derek doesn't want to label but knows definitely means _something_ , a thing that they both turn to when they're in need of an outlet or looking for solace, a thing that Stiles initiated but Derek realizes he wants as well, and he's not ready to push Stiles away with bruises and blood just because he doesn't remember what it felt like to associate sex with someone who isn't Kate, a woman he wants to rip apart limb by limb and set fire to.

"What happened to you?" Derek demands. He smells the air, and under the scent of Stiles' uncertainty and nerves is a stench he can't believe he never smelled before, of cologne and hair gel and ink. It's the scent of another person, not Scott's usual lingering odor of Cheetos or his father's laundry detergent drifting onto Stiles' skin. A newcomer, a newcomer who's been close to Stiles, possibly even hurt him.

Derek feels a little sick to his stomach at the thought, considering that here he is trying to help Scott and Isaac use their newfound powers to their advantage and leaving the human, the closest human to him, completely unprotected. He could've been teaching Stiles, showing him defense techniques, since after all, Stiles would be rather effective bait if somebody wanted to hurt Derek at his core unexpectedly. Stiles probably wouldn't have minded the odd fighting lesson in the yard in between hours of researching with Peter now and then, just how to deliver a strong right-hook or how to expose a werewolf's weakness should he ever find himself in such an unfavorable position. 

"Nothing," Stiles says instantly. His eyes are on the floor as he pulls his sleeves over his bruises. His lips are still swollen from where Derek's been kissing them and he looks lost, bruised and swollen, and Derek doesn't need the hear the unnatural blip in Stiles' heartbeat to know he's lying.

"You're lying."

"Just—let it go, okay?" Stiles says, suddenly irritated.

"You smell like—"

"I said let it go!" Stiles yells, with more roar than his throat looks capable of, and Derek's surprised. He softens a moment later, deflating back into his oversized sweatshirt. Derek had never realized just how small he is before, same height as Derek but lacking the broad shoulders and muscle definition and hiding under layers of clothing. "Do you want some food?" Stiles asks out of the blue, inching toward the kitchen. Derek stares at him while Stiles adds, "I want some food."

He's out of Derek's sight and in the kitchen puttering about the nearly empty cabinets a moment later, heartbeat racing from where Derek hears him a room away. He turns to his nose for the scent, the one of musty ink and a pungent cologne, and makes the decision to track it down.

\--

The very first time it happens, Stiles doesn't know how it switches from the average detention to something much more morbid than that. He's humming the original Batman theme to himself while he organizes the manhandled chemistry books laying in a haphazard heap on the cart in the corner when Harris softly tells him to stop fiddling with the books and calls him over to his desk. He's perched there with a flicker of an amused smile on his face, like the one he sports when Scott used to try to get out of detention by pleaing the don't-let-me-get-fired-from-my-job card, and it already lets Stiles know that he's in for a task that will most likely degrade him.

"You're an insufferable child, Mr. Stilinski," Harris says in the same soft voice he always reserves for insults. "Sometimes I wonder if there really is anything you're good for, considering you barely passed chemistry and your concentration is shot. So tell me, Mr. Stilinski. What are you good for?"

Stiles chews his lip and tries not to focus on the incredible offensiveness of Harris' question, concentrating instead on drumming up some semblance of an answer to his question. He considers what he's good for--he's somehow managed to avoid being mauled in the past year, which considering the amount of supernatural peril he's found himself ensnared in recently is quite an accomplishment, and he can make spaghetti and toast when his father tells him he'll be too late at the station to eat dinner at home with Stiles. He figures that neither would truly impress Harris, and decides he'll go with humor for his reply instead.

"Uhhhh," he deadpans. "Well, I've mastered staying alive for the past sixteen years, so there's that."

Mr. Harris chuckles to his lap, a chuckle completely devoid of humor. "I see. Then allow me to give you a new opportunity to be good at something."

He slides off his desk and plants a hand on Stiles' shoulder, firm in the way that makes Stiles think that his grip would only tighten would Stiles start to squirm under the scrutiny, and pushes. Stiles buckles and is on his knees before knows what hits him, and that's when everything goes south.

"You've never been very good at pleasing me, Mr. Stilinski. But I'm willing to give you a second chance."

What happens next is a blur of zippers unfastening and unrelenting hands pressing into his cheeks, his throat, his neck, holding him in place. Harris doesn't beat around the bush and a second later there's an obstruction in his mouth, forcing down his throat and triggering his gag reflex while his fingers scramble helplessly on the slick floors. 

\--

The baths and showers don't help. It starts to become a mold that goes miles deep under Stiles' fingernails, something that eats away at his insides. He looks for refuge the way he knows Derek does whenever he remembers bits and pieces of his family, like the sound of his sister's laugh or his mother's cooking, by pushing it back and exercising. He's not an aggressive boy, never has been, but he tries to let his fists drain the anger out of him.

He tries to wash it all away ways that the shower never could, and finds himself on the Beacon Hills Preserve. He remembers days when he and Scott would go stumbling through the undergrowth, looking for adventures and counting the scabs on their knees while thorns and twigs snapped under their shoes, climbing the trees until Scott's mom would call him in a fury on his phone beckoning him back before dark to help with dinner, befriending the trees and lounging against the crisping leaves. Now the trees feel barren, the trickles of water blurring into mud along canals weathered into the earth appearing slimy when his foot splashes into the puddles, and the forest feels cold. Raw, like Derek probably sees it, nothing but a charred souvenir that survived when his house didn't. His family didn't.

Stiles wants to tell himself to man up, because it's not like he's lost a family member, or even his entire family, and the idea of losing his father because of a scuffle at the station or because all of the salt and grease will eventually catch up with his father's health makes a hole of consternation grow from the core of his organs, but right now, he feels like he's lost a part of himself. He's _dirty_. Harris told him so; Harris made him so.

He stands at a fork in the reserve, brown, mossy trunks of trees stretching high into heavens beside him. Up above, a bird crows. It feels too loud, too invasive in the utter silence of the forest, and Stiles makes his decision not to go to the Hale house. He knows intrinsically that Derek wouldn't understand if Stiles even had the voice left in his throat to tell him what's been eating away at his insides. He imagines sharing, pouring out that he let Harris push him around, he didn't stop him because he feels, knows he's powerless in this world where he's bait to the werewolves and monsters up on the chain of the ecosystem, and that makes him filthy, filthy before Harris ever even touched him, and his throat seems to clump with slime. It threatens to come upward, and Stiles heeds the desperate commands of his stomach. He doubles over and heaves right there on the leaves, as if hoping the vomit will somehow purge his burdens if it leaves his body, but it only manages to make his mouth reek of sick. There's a phantom hand, like Harris' touch on his throat, that brushes over his skin, and he heaves again, a fresh batch of stomach acid bubbling along the leaves. It drains into the dirt and swims along the autumn leaves fallen from their branches, looking as disgusting as he feels, and that's when he realizes that he's rotten inside out.

He runs past the Hale house, doesn't even consider going inside or hollering for Derek, and runs until his legs have been reduced to poles of useless rubber. He collapses in front of the preserve lake, right along the jagged edge of wet rocks, and gulps in the air that his lungs miss. Every part of himself feels broken, smudged and rubbed with mud beyond repair, like a rag doll dropped in a storm and retrieved as a waterlogged, muddy facsimile of what it used to be the morning after the rain. He looks at the lake, curving into a bumpy river, murk swirling along bits of twigs and leaves, and pitches himself in.

The water is cold, freezing really, and shocks his body like tiny pinpricks of electricity when he starts wading through the murk. His shoes sink into the mud at the bottom of the lake until he walks in up to his chest, heart pumping against the assault of the chill like it's the only part of him that's still alive, still fighting. He trudges on, ignoring the way his skin starts pounding in protest and the dirty water sloshes up to his chin. He grips the wall of jagged, muddy rocks beside him when his shoes slip and squelch on the sodden ground beneath him, fingernails digging into soft, wet earth as he finds purchase on the rocks. It's cold, too cold, his teeth chattering and his fingers trembling as he lets the coarse and clumsy pull of the stream wash him along. It speeds up, his shoes dragging and catching on the jagged floor, mouth swallowing two, three mouthfuls of filthy water. 

He scrambles for the bank when the current picks up aggression, and it takes him one rattled breath and a leg hooked over the mud before he's lying on his back staring up into the sky where the bare trees stretch lifelessly into the white expanse, shoes waterlogged and every limb frozen. His shirt is plastered onto his chest in a sticky, unpleasant manner alongside his soggy jacket. He shrugs it off and a cool wind he hadn't felt before pierces at his dripping arms, jacket falling into a soaked, defeated heap on the grass next to him. 

Another gust of wind ripples through him, his teeth starting to chatter once more. He's freezing, wet, and dripping mud into his shoes, but for a few moments, he feels like the stains and the filth under his skin have been shocked out of him.

\--

Stiles lays on the couch, eyes unfocused and ears tuning out the sound of cartoons on the television, cartoons that very well would have had him chuckling into his instant dinner and persuading his father into letting him stay up to watch more even though he had a test first hour the next day. Now he stares past the characters, past the pixels. He buries his face into the couch and smells a musk. Beakers of acid. Harris' cologne.

_No_ , Stiles thinks, and turns his face to the ceiling, away from the suffocating stench. Hands on his knees. Pale, slender hands. Clean, yet still managing to dirty Stiles' skin. He squirms in his clothes, writhing to get away. _Please, go._

Glasses loom over him, catching the light of the television. The cartoons chuckle, but it feels tinny, a world away. Harris' hand slips over his shoulder, soothing, squeezing. Stiles jerks.

"Stiles," he says, right in his ear, and Stiles wrenches away.

When he opens his eyes, there is a body bent ominously over him, except it's Scott's body, not Mr. Harris. His hand is wavering defenselessly by his shoulder, like he's wary to touch him again when he's in the fits of a nightmare, and Stiles blinks the sticky vestiges of slimy sleep from his eyes until Scott comes into focus.

"Are you okay, buddy?" He whispers. Another subdued wave of chuckles sounds from behind Stiles. A classroom.

Scott looks worried, like he's staring down at a ghost that's masquerading as Stiles but is just a poor replacement for the real, tangible boy, and Stiles tries smiling. It feels meek on his face when it tugs on his lips. Half the class is watching, murmuring like Stiles napping in class is the most fascinating thing to watch when the English lecture turns boring, and that's when he realizes that he was probably twitching, muttering in his sleep. He turns to Scott as if waiting for him to confirm this fact, except he looks frightened to even be looking at Stiles, as if waiting for him to slowly float away or wisp into the darkness. 

"How long, uh. How long was I out for?"

At the front of the room is Finstock, face contorted between annoyance and amusement, like Stiles falling asleep in class is frustrating but the idea of mocking him in front of all his peers for his inability to stay focused for a forty-five minute period is a delightful prospect, and Stiles feels his stomach morph into a ball of molten lead that very quickly settles into a heavy weight. Finstock starts chuckling and the class takes his lead into increasing the nervous volumes of their snickers. He knows there's gossip to be had. It look Lydia approximately a week to become the school nutjob after crying in the bathroom and she's falling from a pedestal of popularity much higher than he is. He sucks in a breath that feels like wind trapping in his lungs. His mouth is dry, and when he licks his lips he tastes something sour. He feels sour all over, like morning breath or a rotting apple.

"Half the class, maybe?" Scott murmurs back. Stiles sits up, and when he catches Finstock's eye the witty rejoinder usually sitting at the ready on his lips is gone, completely wiped from his brain.

"Now that Stilinski has finished his beauty sleep and has decided to join us," Finstock says, "Perhaps he can explain to us the conclusion of chapter eleven."

Chapter eleven. Chapter eleven. The words couldn't mean less to Stiles. His textbook is normally just a bundle of the same twenty-four letters of the alphabet haphazardly strewn together, but lately it's just another burden. A stack of homework, a pack of Alphas, an overworked father. A manipulative teacher. Stiles licks his lips and tastes the sourness again. It reminds him of Harris.

"Coach, I think, uh. I think I have a pretty good grip on chapter eleven," Scott speaks up out of the blue. He looks lost and completely ready for defeat, like he knows that suicide runs are coming his way during practice, but Scott takes the bullet for Stiles anyway. It's a small victory, if nothing else, that Stiles feels like a sliver of sun on his ashen skin. Perhaps, maybe perhaps, for every bad apple in the bushel, there is a sweet, crunchy opposite sitting on the bottom of the basket waiting patiently to be enjoyed. 

\--

After the first time, the first time Harris touches Stiles and forces his cock down his throat with insistent fingers digging into his jugular and Stiles doesn't feel the phantom gag leave his throat until he heaves twice into the toilet, Stiles thinks it might be it, that his need for revenge has been sated and that Harris is reverting back to icy, sarcastic smiles in the hallway and an unfair propensity to pick on Stiles in class. He goes home in a fog, a daze in which he remembers buckling his seat belt and somehow arriving in his driveway but completely blurring out on the traveling and the stoplights, and he watches his father pour over police evidence at the table and considers exactly how easy and simultaneously how hard it would be to end this here and now. There's a police officer in his home, one with the right to use a gun and a bark of authority that doesn't back down when it comes to protecting his son, but Stiles only wavers by his desk, eyes flitting over the drunken mugshots and unfinished police reports scattered over the dinner table, saying nothing. The Sheriff brings his work home with him enough to have to include his son in his work life as well.

Stiles thinks it's over, and doesn't exactly want to aggravate the situation by bringing his father in to question Harris again when the only proof he has is the dry, sandpaper feeling in his throat and the dirty feeling that's lingering perpetually under his skin like an itch he can't scratch or a mosquito he can't swat away. He has his pride, a rapidly dwindling pride, especially when he spends his day with super strong werewolves. And then there he is. Team Human. He keeps thinking back to Peter Hale's warm breath on his wrist and poised fangs in the parking garage, one centimeter and one nanosecond away from sinking his teeth into breakable flesh and Stiles said no. He said no, and this is what it brought him. He was proud of his humanity, proud of his normalcy in a sea of uncertainty, proud of his vulnerability. Now he's breakable. A brittle old vase in the attic that trembles closer to falling off the edge every time a door slams downstairs. Close to falling. Half off the edge. Dangling precariously close until that last foot stomps hard. He's waiting for the last push.

A week later he's back in detention, and Harris is sporting the same serene smile that unnerves Stiles like it never has before. He was never scared of Harris, just quietly distrusted him and hated him for his unjust punishments, but now he feels the telltale lurch in his stomach like a hook is being pierced through his belly and pulling him along while the skin tears and the stomach acid churns in protest every time he sees his face.

He looms over Stiles while he scrubs desks clean. Sharpie graffiti spelling out Rooney eats it! and crude drawings of male anatomy are littered on the corners of worn lab stations and Stiles zeroes desperately in on the scrawled loops of the capital R when Harris comes up behind him and touches his shoulder.

"You seem tense, Mr. Stilinski," he murmurs. "Is junior year not letting you take advantage of it?"

Stiles thinks about last year. Kanimas, werewolves, crazy alphas. He flits back to the hand on his shoulder and the churning of his stomach. Yes, he'd go back to his dreadful sophomore year in an instance if he could just remove the clammy grip from his hoodie.

"I applaud your teachers for not letting you coast through the year," Harris says. His hand wanders down Stiles' back in a motion that's almost soothing, except it ties his spine in twists and knots. "Let me help you relax."

Two sets of slender hands clasp onto his shoulders and squeeze, rubbing. Insistent thumbs rub between his vertebrae and run down his back. It feels good and terrible all at the same time and Stiles tries not to hurl onto the desk. The massage continues for what feels like ten detentions all strung together, and that's when Harris' hands squeeze, hard and firm, on the curve of his neck, a pose so incredibly domineering Stiles feels like a misbehaving puppy being dragged away from mayhem.

"Your turn," Harris says softly.

It's not a massage he wants, though, and Stiles figures that out fast. Harris' fingers, rough from endless hours of gripping grading pens, maneuver Stiles where he wants him, his fly suddenly undone palms grabbing his jaw in place.

\--

Junior year, despite the frightening prospect of college planning and ACTs, was supposed to be awesome. Stiles had plans for spring break with Scott. He had plans to give his all to the Alpha pack and stop taking no for an answer. He had plans to win over Lydia, and then, to never stop kissing Derek Hale. He had plans to get drunk at three in the morning in the Beacon Hills Preserve and set up a tent by the river. Somewhere along the way, his plans ended.

He grows out his hair at the end of the summer out of sheer laziness, going from stubbly buzz cut to tousled and ragged at the top. It makes him look less like a gangly weed that hasn't grown into all of its post-puberty bones yet, and better yet, Derek likes it. He grabs a hold of it with his fists and uses it as leverage when he kisses Stiles and sucks slow, teasing spots onto his neck that he's careful to not make dark enough to leave marks but deep enough for Stiles to feel it vibrating in his veins. After hushed handjobs in Stiles' bed when Derek climbs up his window and throws him onto the squeaky mattress after the Sheriff falls asleep down the hall, Derek relaxes into a sleepy lull next to him on the tiny bed, hips and torsos pressed together while Derek's hand instinctively tangles into Stiles' hair and strokes at his scalp. Derek is gone in the morning, but Stiles hair, so disheveled it's like he's trying to pick up cable TV signals with the strands, reminds him of Derek's routine head massages.

Harris uses the strands as handles, chunks of hair ideal for fisting and yanking, rough in a way that Derek never is. His hands are tinged with the rough rigor of revenge, persistent and pushy and painful, agonizing tugs on his hair as he pushes Stiles over a desk and pushes his fingers into his asshole. Harris shushes him all the while like Stiles is the impertinence he always is, calling out the wrong answers in class or doodling on his notes with his highlighter, except now he's the fidgeting kid who sobs when Harris manhandles his body and uses him as nothing but convenient friction for his cock.

Stiles cuts his hair three months into the school year just as the weather turns cold and the trees turn crispy brown. He shaves it off and stares at the small child in the mirror that he used to be, memories of the years before flooding back to him as he looks at someone unrecognizable in front of him. The silly boy who used wit as his only weapon and used it well, the carefree boy who embraced his friend's lycanthropy like he was living out an eighties horror movie, the boy who was proud to be small and skinny and human and sometimes, weak and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He sees bits and pieces of that boy in the mirror.

Derek notices two nights later when he jumps through the window and stands in the shadows at the edge of Stiles' bed. His face is eclipsed, only half illuminated in the shine of the moonlight, angles of his jaw and cheekbones strongly chiseled. Everything about Derek is strong.

"What happened to your hair?" Derek asks, reaching out to run his fingers through the stubble. It doesn't feel like it used to, Derek's hands threading through the soft strands to scratch gently at his head.

"I cut it," Stiles says simply, pushing Derek's hand away. Derek touches the soft strands by his ear and makes a noise, ineffable and undecipherable to Stiles' ear. He doesn't try to solve the mystery of what Derek's soft grunts and noises of derision truly mean, only slipping under the sheets and nestling against the cool pillow without word. Derek lounges beside him and pulls Stiles' head into his chest, hand coming up to his hair in its usual spot. He tries stroking the remainders of his hair there, once, twice, three times, before Derek's hands falter and give up, sliding down to the small of his back instead.

\--

Loving Lydia Martin was like a hot July day, one so morbidly hot that the breezes felt like a truck's exhaust pipe and the pavement burnt the worms mid-crawl. Ardent, passionate, obsessive, and painful in a way that fogged his brain just like staring into the sun did. When Lydia Martin started noticing him, it was like jumping into a refreshing, rippling pool on that same day after being denied its relief for hours. Cool and appeasing, and when breaking the surface of the water back into the blistering heat, he could see what the summer heat truly was: mind-washingly distracting and boggling to the brain in a way that was disillusioning. Lydia Martin is beautiful, of course, just like the summer days spent lounging under sun umbrellas, but she's also an enigma that he doesn't actually understand as well as he thinks. Stiles fell in love with a Lydia Martin who refused to share her crayons in second grade and barely ever brushed her hair, too big for her seven-year-old body at the time, and latched onto the image he watched from afar. Gorgeous, clever, resourceful and able to shoot down a boy's hopeful advances in under two point five seconds flat. He was in love with the idea of Lydia Martin.

Then there was Derek, who broadcasted his nastiest and meanest sides to the world and hid only his emotions. It was easy to hate Derek Hale, what with his tendency for violence and intimidation and his sassy eyebrows, and easy to not be disillusioned by Derek Hale. He kept secrets to himself and snapped at Stiles' humor, but after Stiles got over the constant brooding and grumpy demeanor and accepted his flaws, he started noticing his positive sides. The complete opposite of Lydia Martin, who was small, petite, feisty and red-headed, and whom Stiles worshiped like a Goddess descended to earth. Stiles didn't worship Derek, not even close, but rather delighted in ridiculing him and standing up to Derek until Derek backed down his powerful attitude and acquiesced to Stiles as well. It was equal, in a strange, distorted way that Derek allowed as long as it didn't make him feel too vulnerable and defenseless, and Stiles was all right with that if only to avoid being compared to Kate.

They read Spenserian sonnets in English that year, sonnets that his classmates didn't understand but that Stiles felt a strange, intrinsic connection with because he could relate with Spenser's idea of love and affection. It was Derek, him and Derek, condensed into three quatrains and a couplet.

Sonnet 30 says it best, words strung together that turned the alphabet into gold, contrasting the two ideas of fire and ice. An ardent flame and a distant block of ice. "My love is like to ice, and I to fire: how come it then that that this her cold so great is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire, but harder grows, the more I her entreat?" Spenser writes, and Stiles understands. Him and Derek are an unlikely pair, a couple that should, for all intents and purposes, repel and destroy each other, each powerful but better off separate and distant from the other, never to work successfully in tandem.

And then Peter Hale came along, paired with Stiles' horrible curiosity and a police radio he illegally had possession of that informed him of half a mangled body out in the woods, and suddenly they were in the same world. Fire and ice. Both resilient and damaging and contrasts in a world of neutrality, and even though they sniped at each other and never backed down easily, it worked. They found common ground that Stiles had with nobody else. Derek understood the pain of a mother's death and the constant ache for family in a way Scott never could. 

Then there was Harris, a blemish on his otherwise dangerous, reckless, and helplessly awesome life. What he did to him, what he forced Stiles to do, it was more than just embarrassing and painful. It confirmed every suspicion Stiles had ever had after Scott turned, that he was a tiny breakable human set up against a boy with fangs and unmatchable speed. It didn't matter if it was lacrosse or self defense or survival. Stiles was the glass figurine up on the shelf that could break with just one sneeze.

He didn't want to worry his father, who spent nights awake with dark circles under his eyes as he worked on police cases. He didn't want to worry Derek, who worked just as hard to keep the city safe from the alpha pack. He didn't want to worry Scott, who could hardly handle his own problems.

So he stayed quiet, and things got worse.

\--

The lake and the river start becoming a refuge for Stiles. The water isn't like that of the shower, clean and pressured and steamy on the shower tiles, but murky and cold and mingling with mud and fallen leaves. It feels like a part of nature, like a natural, dangerous stream that could wash Stiles' problems away. Or maybe just wash Stiles away.

He comes back after the first incident, and even though he still remembers the sensation of wet, icy skin and sitting in a pool of drenched murk in his Jeep on the shaky drive home, he still feels the strong pull at his limbs urging him to climb back in. He thinks about Matt, the boy who couldn't forget Lahey's face or the feeling of sinking to the bottom of a pool that may as well have been the bottom of the ocean when nobody came to save him, and suddenly knows the feeling.

Stiles can't close his eyes anymore, can't even doze off in class or fall into a dreamless slumber in the comfort of his own bed. Every time his eyelids shut, he sees Harris, smells Harris leaning over him, feels his breath on his neck and his demanding fingers grabbing his dick, abusing his hole, pushing into his mouth and down his throat to make room for his dick. It makes him sick to his stomach right over the edge of his bed.

He sits cross-legged by the river, calm at this end but rushing loudly in the distance. Stiles grabs a fistful of rocks and throws them in. They sink under the waterline, disturbing the quiet waves and causing bubbles to break out on the film of dust and dirt masking the water. The nature goes back to its peaceful, unperturbed state.

He sits there for a good half an hour before he shucks off his coat and his shoes. The water seems like the only release he has anymore. Beating Scott on XBox, sharing Popsicles with Derek on his porch, they're all moments that Stiles isn't sure are his own past anymore, as if he merely dreamed them up on a particularly imaginative day when he was five and full of impossible ideas. He slips his feet into the freezing water. The water's gotten colder since his last visit, nipped with the approaching winter, and Stiles slides in without turning back. The cold hits him like a shock again, but it's not as bad this time, like his body's gotten number. He feels himself sink to the bottom until his feet make contact with the rough floor, only his chin perched over the water. 

He lets himself go under and open his eyes. The dirt burns his retinas but he wants to see what lives inside such a grimy cavern, and along the shadowy walls and murky teal waves is nothing. Not even a lone school of tiny fish or the Lochness monster. That would've been the day, when after months of chasing down werewolves he'd break the news that there's a sea monster in the Beacon Hills Preserve. He can't see further than a few feet, though, water too filmy and too black to make out much. He returns to the surface and takes in the cold air as he moves in further. It's more dangerous, less controllable the further he goes, but he wants it. He wants to be thrown around by a force greater than himself, swum along a lake like a desperate fish failing to go upstream. 

Stiles goes farther, and farther, when his foot hits a rock uncovered on the ground and cuts his foot. It stings, right on the ankle, but the blood washes away and the cold numbs the burn. Stiles feels the waves pull him along further and submits himself to the water. It gets rougher.

A tide of angry waves splashes over his head. It's deeper here, with no ground his feet can reach, and Stiles goes under and swallows murk before he pushes himself to the surface. He still feels dirty, unbelievably unfixable, and another waves pushes him aside and under. Who was it, who died in the river after picking flowers? It was a Shakespearean character, drunk with grief, of course, but Stiles doesn't remember the circumstances. His head feels like it's spinning when he goes under and oxygen leaves his lungs again. The waves are coming too fast now, pushing him where he can't scramble to the bank for safety, and he can't breathe, can't even find his footing. He can't tell down from up anymore as he desperately opens his eyes and sees dark green water, down under the waterline, and maybe it was Ophelia? Ophelia was always picking flowers in Hamlet, and then she went mad. His lungs are burning. His father is going to kill him.

Suddenly a hand reaches down under the murk, grabbing onto Stiles' armpit and yanking him out of the river with hard, insistent strength. He lands on the ground, gulping in air, blinking out the water from his burning eyes while he coughs and breathes through the burn of his tortured lungs. That's when he realizes that he had a savior and twists on the dirt where Derek, half his body drenched in water and jaw set in poorly veiled anger, is sitting over him. Next to him, the river charges on, leading into the Beacon Hills Preserve lake where the water calms.

"What the hell did you think you were doing?!" Derek grits out, not a shred of amusement in his voice. Stiles is shivering madly from the cold, but Derek is already yanking off his leather jacket and throwing it on Stiles' chest. "The water's freezing!"

He picks Stiles up without waiting for an answer, winding his arm over his shoulder despite the fact that he's not much more than a wet, icy ragdoll, and heads for Stiles' Jeep, parked a far ways away but easily trackable considering it constantly carries a pungent odor of Doritos with it that Derek sniffs out in seconds. It's a long walk back, Stiles chattering and stumbling along while Derek carries the majority of his weight before he stuffs him into the passenger seat of his own car and fiddles with his seat belt like he's his mother. Stiles would mind, normally, he's a teenager, not a toddler, but he doesn't complain as Derek's hardly amused face looms over him as he clicks his seatbelt in and heads for the driver's side. He looks gruff and upset and isn't saying a word, and by this point Stiles would prefer yelling to anything else, but the ride remains silent except for the loud blasting of the heat until Derek pulls up to Stiles' house. His father's car is in the driveway as well, a sign that Stiles has something to deal with when he heads inside, and he starts feeling all of his secrets crumble around him. A wetness blurs up in his eyes.

Suddenly there's a hand wrapped around his own, white-knuckled on his knee, and Stiles looks up to see Derek's fingers blanketing his fist. Derek doesn't hold hands. It's right up there with serenades from his bedroom window and flowers delivered to his door by a singing man in a pinstriped suit and a falsetto voice, and Derek doesn't do any type of romantic gestures. He tugs on Stiles' unrelenting fist.

"Come on," Derek says, his voice low and leaving no room for wheedling away. He gets out of his side and walks over to Stiles', who all the while takes in his pitiful position. He's sitting in a chilly pool of lake water that's sure to leave a stain on his already filthy seats, droplets of water clinging to the hair on the back of his neck where the strands get bristly. A droplet squeezes away and runs down his neck. It tickles.

Derek opens his car door for him and waits for him to step out and face his father. It's a scary thought, actually, because Stiles' father normally equates microwavable snacks and comfort to him instead of impending fear of what's to come when he starts his confession, but Stiles decides hiding in his Jeep instead might take away all the dignity he has left. He slides out of his seat and follows Derek to the front door.

"Stiles—what the hell happened to you?!" His father demands the moment he steps inside. Derek is right behind him, and he's positive that the suspected-but-exonerated criminal and notorious enigma of Beacon HIlls isn't helping his case. Oddly, it still comforts Stiles to feel his heavy presence behind him. 

When he sinks into his chair at the table wet clothes and all and opens his mouth, the words don't stop coming.

\--

His father is appalled and enraged. Derek feels responsible and guilty. All is exactly as Stiles imagined, except no one is blaming him, but instead treating him like a very gentle and fragile trinket that will shatter should he be breathed on incorrectly. His father yells, but not at him, and Derek's hands, curling over his own thighs, roll up into fists several times. Stiles hopes for his father's sake that the claws don't come out.

Talking hurts, but it's also a release that feels as good as the river did. The words stutter and don't string together eloquently, but he gets the story out nonetheless. He tells them about how nobody knew, not even Scott, and how he's felt dirty. Grimy. Weak. Vulnerable when surrounded by a world of power. 

His father wants to buy him pepper spray, or maybe even a gun, and Derek looks like he'd very much like to deliver justice himself in the most brutal way possible. Stiles can imagine it—just a bloody crime scene with lots of bite marks that makes him feel a little better mentally considering, but not much better when it comes to appeasing his perpetually churning stomach.

The conversation feels as if it lasts for centuries, long, agonizing centuries, and when it finally ends Stiles is sitting in dry, wrinkly clothes and Derek's leather jacket as the sky turns dark outside. His father leaves almost instantly to start questioning and apprehending Harris, and Derek sticks around.

He tries to act like he's all right, like he's not concerned by Derek's intense gaze that he feels staring into his skin, and sits down with the TV playing white noise for his ear on the sofa. Derek sits on the other sofa, as if he's keeping quiet sentinel over him, and when Stiles falls asleep into the cushions into a better, calmer sleep than he's experienced in the last few weeks now that his heart's free of the burdens of secrets, Derek is still sitting on the opposite couch, guarding, watching.

\--

Stiles' dad gives him the option of staying home a few days after they apprehend Harris and take Stiles' statement, just to take a rest from schoolwork and impending tests and the lingering memory of being molested in a classroom after school, but Stiles refuses his offer because a) he's fine, b) Harris is in jail anyway, and c) he doesn't want to worry Scott.

There are people like Derek who probably knew or at least suspected all along that Stiles was getting abused, and people like his father who noticed slight changes in his behavior, and then there were people like Scott who may have noticed all of the above but was too wrapped up in his own drama to make sense of it. Stiles doesn't blame him. Scott has a lot of drama, more than anyone he knows, and that includes lacrosse, girls, grades, and the whole suddenly turning into a werewolf during sophomore year thing. 

But by Monday when school starts and Harris' classroom is roped off and dark inside, Stiles knows that Scott will have figured it out, been informed by his father, or have put together the pieces. When they meet up in the parking lot, Scott tying up his bike to the rack much slower than necessary like he was lingering until Stiles' rickety Jeep pulled up before going inside, Scott looks concerned, apologetic, and even a little guilty. He clearly doesn't know what to say except for to examine Stiles like an out-of-touch concerned father, so Stiles pats him on the back and offers him a "it's okay, buddy. Sorry I didn't tell you," and that's that. They walk by Harris' locked classroom and Stiles sets his jaw and says nothing, ignoring the phantom whiffs of Harris' cologne that wash over him as he walks by the door, and Scott only throws him about six corner-of-his-eye glances as they do so. The great thing about Scott is that, considering how much he likes to whine about some of his own problems, he doesn't push Stiles about his.

\--

For a long time, Derek doesn't touch Stiles. Doesn't even get close. He comes over sometimes to watch a movie and his father only watches in bewilderment at the new developments and the new friends Stiles has been making and passes the popcorn, but even long after the sheriff goes to bed and tells Stiles to not stay up past midnight with that English test tomorrow he somehow found out about, Derek still maintains his distance on the side of the couch. In a perfect world, Stiles would love to assume that Derek's secretly afraid of the sheriff, but Stiles knows what this is. He's secretly afraid of being Harris 2.0, just another bad touch from an aggressive guy too old to be considered legal when he touches Stiles.

He wishes he could reach over the couch and grab Derek by the hips and ravish his body like he used to daydream about doing all summer long when the days were nothing but a blur of research and sweltering heat and Derek in tight henleys, but his own body keeps himself at bay. Instead, his hands twitch in his lap like they have the inspiration to move, but not the energy for the follow through, like a design student who doesn't know how to bring his two dimensional sketches to life. 

"I just want you to know," Stiles brings up casually over the din of Luke Skywalker battling it out with his father. He's about to lose a hand so Stiles rummages around in the popcorn and tries to act as light about the situation as possible. "That, I, uh. I know you—you and Harris—you're not the same. Not for me, anyway."

Derek is silent, but Stiles can see his eyes twitch in his direction on the other end of the sofa. 

"And maybe I'm not ready for—y'know, the boom chicka wow wow," Stiles thumbs an unpopped kernel of popcorn at the greasy bottom of the bowl as he speaks. "But I'm sort of sick of you just watching me sleep a whole couch away. I mean, we could at least get our snuggle on like old people. For now."

The _for now_ lingers in the air like a promise. For whatever reason, it doesn't petrify Stiles, who still remembers the feel of Harris' hands on his bare, trembling thighs if he lets his mind wander. Derek, even with his scary broody face and broad hands, has never haunted his thoughts like a bad horror movie that won't quit in his brain when it gets dark out. Something in the air changes, like Stiles can tangibly feel the tension deflating out of Derek's shoulders.

"I wouldn't push you into anything," Derek finally says. "I never wanted to."

"You never did," Stiles says. There's another silence, but this one's comfortable. The space between them on the couch, occupied by the massive snack bowl, doesn't feel so large anymore even though nobody's moved. "So do you think I should get an Obi-Wan beard?"

Derek pauses for a beat, like he's considering it. When Stiles looks over he sees the hint of a smile on his face. It's incredibly mollifying. "No. No, I don't think so."

They both reach for the popcorn bowl and their hands brush. The popcorn is buttery and oily and maybe even a little sweaty, but Stiles holds his hand there for a moment until he knocks it playfully against Derek's knuckle and their fingers both retreat from the bowl to their mouths with handfuls of popcorn wedged between their fingers. 

That night, halfway into _The Phantom Menace_ , Stiles falls asleep with his head resting on Derek's shoulder, and Derek stays.

\--

Taking Harris away solves things, almost entirely, except for the residual stains Stiles still harbors under his skin. He knows that Harris is out of his future, but erasing him from the past is the hard part. He likes to believe that there's a reason that the front window of his car is so big when the rearview mirror is so tiny, that his past will eventually dwindle out of sight and become nothing more than a minuscule dot to blink away, but he still feels the urge to rid his body of the evidence.

There's nothing there, of course, as all of the bruises have faded, but it's not what he can see that bothers Stiles, but rather what he feels. He still feels Harris' thumb on his jaw and his breath in his ear.

He's sitting in the Hale house leafing through a few old albums Derek's been trying and failing to keep out of Stiles' sight where half the pages are burnt but the other half are full of faded photographs, most of them with poor lighting because flash wasn't an option for a family full of werewolf eyes, when Peter is the one who offers him answers. It's strange, sitting here with a man who's slammed him bodily onto the hood of his Jeep with Lydia's blood still on the sleeves of his blazer, but he supposes that the Hale family doesn't exactly know how to approach people without resorting to violence for at least the first few weeks until a meek sense of trust and familiarity settles in.

"Take a shower," Peter tells him over Stiles' shoulder while they thumb through the album together when Stiles tells him about it, not exactly intending to but falling for Peter's charismatic prodding anyway when Peter starts asking about how he's feeling. "Trust me. Take a long shower. Just sit there. Let the water do its job."

Stiles has tried the shower technique before, but he's willing to do it again until he uses up the warm water, and two days later he's leaning his head against the cool shower tile while a warm waterfall pitter patters down his back from the showerhead. His muscles relax under the heat, just hot enough that it tickles his skin red, and it inspires him to take more showers. He's not resorting to laying biscuits and candles on the rim and soaking in a tub full of bubbles, but standing under a spray of steam and an insistent fall of water feels like spending a long afternoon in the summertime rain. Cleansing, relaxing, and somehow not at all uncomfortable when the cool droplets penetrate the summer heat waves and drench his clothing.

He thinks Peter had the right idea with long showers, but it's Derek who ultimately makes them worth it. He climbs in with him one day when Stiles is standing in silence under the spray, completely bare of any clothing and what would normally be a sight that would either daunt or arouse Stiles but happens to do neither. He knows— _Derek_ knows—that Stiles isn't ready for the under the belt action that he would've been foaming at the month for a year ago, but when Derek slithers up in his space and blankets his backside with his chest, all sexual implications seem to dwindle.

Derek acts like a cleansing agent, like the suds and soap the shower's spray lacked before, and his hands wash Stiles with a tenderness he doesn't expect out of his hands. He lathers up his backside and his arms and behind his knees, a slow and deliberate process that feels like Stiles has been born again, fresh into the world with clean, naked skin that's a blank canvas waiting to be touched.

He wonders if Peter had someone to do this for him after the fire, or Derek, a simple, nearly familial touch to wash away the feeling of their relatives' laughter and the licking of flames into their nightmares, the type of touch that no body can flinch away from. Stiles closes his eyes and trusts, trusts blindly in Derek and nearly tips back against the shower tiles, but Derek catches him by the waist and holds him steady as he directs him under the spray and the soap washes off his skin and down the drain. 

"You should grow out your hair again," Derek murmurs into his ear, a soft brush of lips while his jaw nuzzles the short bristles of his hair, and Stiles thinks it might be a good idea.

\--

It takes a while, but things go back to normal. It turns out that time really does heal wounds, maybe not entirely, but the pain and the blood is gone, leaving nothing but a faint scar. Stiles likes to view greasy dinners with his dad and first person shooter games with Scott like scar cream, little dabs of therapy that help him remember that he is, in fact, a teenager, and it's okay to not hold the weight of the entire world on his shoulders.

He never shares all the details, not with his dad, not with Derek, not with Scott. Everybody knows the story—Stiles got taken advantage of by a guy who already has a pretty shady history in the police department—but he likes keeping the gory details to himself, and thankfully, he's not friends with the gossipmongers who are desperate for all of the dirty, gritty specifics. He gets a few glances here and there in school, but he expects nothing better when it comes to privacy in a town as small as Beacon Hills, and doesn't struggle blocking them out. He spent a long time blocking out the negative aspects of his life, and it's a skill he finds useful even after the nights of feeling the ghost of Harris' invasive touches are over. 

From the beginning, Stiles thought that he would never forget the details, from the scratches of the desks he was bent over to slightly clammy feel of Harris' demanding palm on the small of his back. But he was wrong, and he's starting to forget. He's sure that psychologists would say that he's repressing, purposefully pushing back haunting memories, but if that's the case Stiles doesn't mind never remembering them again.

Oddly enough, Harris leaving his life casts a brighter light on everything else, from Alpha Packs to grumpy werewolves on full moons. They seem like adventures again, stupid adventures, but adventures nonetheless, and Stiles doesn't mind leaving his house on full moons to investigate supernatural horrors when every common-sensed individual would lock their doors and hide in their basements. It makes him feel important, makes him feel like humanity isn't a hindrance, makes him feel stronger than he ever was before.

Derek starts teaching him how to throw a punch and not break his thumb in the process. He teaches him how to beat a werewolf in a fight, a lesson that Stiles personally takes to heart considering that it's a quiet affirmation from Derek that he trusts him with information that could potentially leave Derek vulnerable. His dad buys him a punching bag and drills it into his ceiling, a big fat sausage-shaped deep red punching bag that takes no mercy. The bad days, the days where it rains and he remembers Harris' hands, he locks himself in his room and throws punches. It helps.

More than anything, it teaches him that no matter the importance, other people forget things. It takes a few months of strange looks, but people stop caring if Stiles is the kid who got molested after school by the creepy chemistry teacher and go back to mocking him about the usual: his lacrosse skills. It feels good, strangely enough, to get that chunk of normalcy back into his life where the worst part about his day is somebody throwing in a weak jab at his ability to handle a lacrosse stick.

He doesn't forget what happened, but his father and his counselors and Derek and everybody's mother reassures him over and over again that it wasn't his fault and that what happened to him wasn't a sign of his own weakness. He spends his days with werewolves who can bench press trucks, so he still has trouble believing it, but he finally gets that what he lacks in physical ability he can very much make up for in mental ability. He may not be as smart as Lydia breezing through a math exam like it was a kindergartener's homework, but he's a bright kid who gets good grades as long as he focuses. That's why Derek asks him to help him research, why Scott always asks him how to do his English homework, and why his father always claps him on the back and tells him he's proud of him.

His life isn't a Lifetime movie, so he doesn't go to the jail to stare at Harris from behind the protective window and beg for answers to questions like _why me?_ or _why at all?_ because he doesn't think he needs satisfying essay answers to feel as if that chapter of his life has closed. He knows why. He was a convenient target with a vulnerable state of mind who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Other than that, everything else stays the same. Scott is still laughably beatable in Call of Duty, his father still sprinkles on the extra salt, and Derek is still there. He supposes that maybe he and Derek have much more in common than he first ever guessed when he first saw the guy standing guard like an animal on its haunches that day they trespassed because Scott had lost his inhaler. They both had tragic deaths in the family, but more importantly, they both knew what it felt like to be abused. Derek by Kate, and then for years, himself. Stiles gets it like he never did before when he would stare at the charred ruins of the Hale house and wonder what would possess someone to live there. He gets it now.

But Stiles still resigns himself to not understanding everything about Derek, or even himself. They work together, seamlessly, with banter and snarking and late nights staying up, even though all of nature suggests that they shouldn't. They're both a little scarred, both a little cynical, and both a little anti-hero. Stiles can deal with that.

As a matter of fact, he can deal with all of it.


End file.
